Attraction
by North of the North
Summary: In this world there are monsters that are attracted to a special kind of human. These special humans have a curse on them that makes them hate their monster. There are also monsters that hunt down their fellow monsters that are attracted to humans and kill them and their special human. Gilbert is one such Hunter. Mathew is one such human, and Ivan is the monster attracted to him.
1. Chapter 1

*Ivan's POV for parts of it*

In this world there are magical beings that are always attracted to humans. It's in their nature. And it's in human beings nature, their fate, that they are always repelled by these creatures.

But it is a specific breed of humans who can attract one of the magical beings, these monsters, and it is a special, harmless, docile kind of monster that is attracted to them. The rest of the monsters instead spend their lives hunting down these special humans, and most of the time they torture them to death for fun.

Despite how many special humans lives it would save, all monsters are under an oath once they become of age and venture into this world at ten years of age, to either find their mate, their special human, or kill them, to never tell any human, special or not, about their true existence.

Therein lies the dilemma for these heartsick beings that are attracted to their special human, no matter what they do, they can never tell their human exactly what they are or give them a reason for their unnatural possessiveness of them. They can only tell one truth to their human, that they would always lay down their life for them because they love them with all of their heart. And yet that never stops fate from making their human hate them more than anyone else. Some monsters choose to never date their human and in that way stay by them, happy even after they marry somebody else because they know that their clock starts ticking down the moment they let their human know they love them. Three months, that is it.

Three months is all they have, and Ivan and Mathew had already hit their three month mark in their relationship weeks ago.

On the day of their three month anniversary, Ivan had taken Mathew out for a movie, his favourite, in the theatre. Ivan's eyes had glanced to his watch to his watch every few seconds, watching the minutes tick down until Mathew suddenly fainted at the exact time that Ivan had confessed to him three months ago. Ivan had concealed what happened by putting up a small glamour, and the other theatre goers were none the wiser. But he could tell that as soon as Mathew had woken up moments later that his memories had been replaced like all special humans memories are. And from the way that Mathew acted around him after that, and the words he'd said to him at the theatre before he ran out, it was clear that his new memories were of an abusive relationship. And they had, unfortunately, given Mathew a strong enough will to "stand up" to Ivan that day and break up with him.

Ivan cursed his luck even now, weeks later, whenever he remembered it. Mathew was such a shy and gentle person that Ivan had almost hoped in that last half hour before Mathew stormed off that he could still keep Mathew by acting intimidating to fit Mathew's new memories of him and perhaps scare Mathew into staying.

But fate had other ideas, and it gave Mathew the courage to "get away" and left Ivan feeling worse for even considering scaring Mathew into being with him. He should have known from the other monsters stories that it wouldn't work.

For a time, he had also considered telling Mathew about the human-monster relationship curse, but that was taboo and punishable by death. And not by the other Attraction Monsters either, if a special human knew about the monster-human relationship, their bodies could be taken over by a Hunter easily and the Hunter would then kill their fellow monster using its own special human to do the job. Ivan hated even the thought of it. Most times the human was caught by others shortly after the murder and then their life was ruined even more. Ivan didn't want to ruin Mathew's life at all.

So Ivan just let Mathew get away from him, and he also stayed away from Mathew. This situation was what made Mathew happy now. And in some perverse way, that made Ivan happy too just seeing him smiling whenever he left the room. Ivan had vowed to himself he would stay away and had made no contact with Mathew since the curse kicked in, until he smelled the scent of a Hunter.

Then his alarms flared up and he ignored his caution to himself, and he started sending Mathew letters warning him away from the Hunter. He was fine with Mathew hating him more now that he'd established contact again, his consolation to himself was that perhaps if he did this then the buried memories of what really happened before in Mathew's subconscious might even listen to him , make Mathew listen to him, and stop Mathew from getting killed.

Then the Hunter enrolled in their school and Ivan's warning bells turned into sirens. The Hunter was definitely targeting Mathew. And special humans are always attracted to Hunters after the curse takes place and now the Hunter Gilbert was in such close proximity to Mathew. He was even starting to see Mathew throwing Gilbert glances in the class they had together and in the hallways.

Ivan almost gave up hope of ever saving Mathew every single time he saw Mathew throw out his warning letters; but he couldn't give up yet, Mathew was still alive. So Ivan kept sending him secret letters until the day he saw Gilbert also slip a letter inside of Mathew's locker. He waited until he saw Mathew open up his locker door, until he saw Mathew's eyes widen, and until he saw Mathew taking off down the hall back towards the school doors before he started having a full-blown out panic attack. The Hunter was going to strike now. How was he supposed to handle this? He couldn't very well stalk Mathew with everything going on between them, but he also couldn't let Mathew die. Out of those two choices, Ivan knew the one that he would always choose. He would protect Mathew until his dying breath. Ivan skipped school that day and hid himself inside of a glamour outside of Mathew's house. When Mathew left, he followed.

* * *

*Mathew's POV*

A new person came to school and even more new letters started showing up in Mathew's locker.

Ivan, the jerk.

Mathew could tell when Ivan wrote him those letters; Ivan had such childish writing it was so easy to identify.

Mathew decided to ignore those letters, after all he was the one who'd broken up with Ivan, and not one of them had a single apology for Ivan's behaviour from before that had prompted the breakup. All they did was warn him against Gilbert, the new transfer kid from Germany.

Feeling vindictive, Mathew started to write about how handsome Gilbert was in his diary during a spare period he had right after another one of those stupid letters had shown up in his locker. Then Mathew actually thought about it, and agreed with his thoughtless revenge. Gilbert actually was handsome with his face clear of any pimples and his unique features of an extreme version of an albino. Then again, Mathew's features were somewhat unique too with his purple eyes and runaway curl in front of his eyes that refused to ever go away, but Mathew had never heard of an albino with pure white hair and red eyes before, he'd just heard of albinos with pinkish eyes and pale skin. Now Gilbert, he was something. That was for sure now that Mathew thought about it. Mathew's next few paragraphs had a bit more emotion behind them when he waxed on about all of Gilbert's wonders and Ivan's shortcomings.

Then his diary failed to magically appear in his bag at the end of the day when he dumped it out onto his bed and rifled through the contents again and again.

'No biggie. I'll probably just find it tomorrow when I look through my locker.'

Nothing. His locker was spotless besides another letter that had shown up. This was the only letter so far that hadn't been written on brown paper inside of a white envelope. This one was in a deep blue envelope on white paper. Mathew ignored that oddity when he scanned through the letter.

The contents were different from Ivan's previous warnings about Gilbert.

"I love you, Mathew.

-Ivan"

'It's too late for that. Oh well, at least now I can give an excuse to my Dad and Papa on why I came back home.'

It was only eight o'clock. None of the teachers would notice he was here, he could just go back home and ask to be called in sick. Ivan was getting creepy again.

Francis, his papa, had totally understood the situation and had negotiated with Arthur, his dad, when Arthur threatened to send him right back to school. He didn't want to deal with Ivan at all right now. And it was such a perfect day out. When his parents left, Mathew slipped out of the house to take a walk too.

Everything was fine for a good half hour before he saw Gilbert, and Gilbert also saw him and hurried over.

Mathew really didn't want to have to deal with him either, but he couldn't just send him away after Gilbert had blurted out, "Hey, I'm cutting school. I just happened to see you, do you mind if we hang out?" as his greeting.

Sure, he had "just happened to see me". Mathew blinked. When did he become so suspicious of people? When had he started to believe what Ivan was telling him?

Mathew agreed to hang out partly so he could prove to himself that he wasn't becoming paranoid of Gilbert. That wasn't helped by him catching Gilbert's eyes looking at him every few seconds whenever he wasn't looking.

'I shouldn't be feeling suspicious of him. Gilbert's probably a really great person and I'm just freaking out because of my nerves lately. Nothing is going to happen to me because of him, I know it. Ivan was just trying to control me again. But, why would he specifically mention Gilbert and only Gilbert as who I should avoid in every single letter?' I hardened my gaze. I'm supposed to be forgetting what Ivan was saying to me, not dwelling on it. 'He didn't mention him in the last one.' I argue back to myself just to end this fight. My thoughts don't stop. They continue and I try to ignore them. I have about as much luck with that as I do with avoiding Ivan himself. The inner voice arguing against trusting Gilbert is starting to sound suspiciously like Ivan. I hate that.

'Why can't he just leave me alone?'

Gilbert looked at him again, and I dismissed it as a trick of the mind with being overly anxious about Ivan.

When they entered a neighbourhood on their walk and Mathew had another suspicion that Gilbert was leading him to a specific place, he ignored the Ivan-esque voice. And when Gilbert said that they were a somewhat close to his house, Mathew accepted his invitation to go in and get away from the sun for a bit.

'You're being pig-headed, Mathew.'

He ignored the Ivan voice again.

* * *

**With the story, which do you guys like better? Do you like just one of the two character's POVs in a chapter, and which one? Or do you like both of their POV's being there?**

**And, happy Easter Break, guys. I feel so sorry for the Maritimers, they got all that snow over the past while. The pictures from that are pretty cool though, people made tunnels over there underneath the snow trying to find their vehicles.**

**And, I just want to know, but is anyone else a bit frustrated with the threats against the malls that was put out a couple months ago? **

**My school and others are being denied by our principals a trip to West Ed mall because of them. And there was that cheerleading competition that was supposed to be held there that groups couldn't go to either. What is your guys' take on the whole situation? Our trip was planned since last year and we're trying to think of things to convince our principal that we should still be allowed to go. And our principal gave us a talk on how silly we are for wanting to go to the West Edmonton Mall when now that there is a threat to it, we should just go elsewhere else. Has anyone else had experiences like this? What is your take on the situation?**


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as they entered Gilbert's house, Gilbert had locked the door and his grin had turned predatory. When Gilbert had advanced, Mathew had retreated step by step until Gilbert got bored of their little game of tag and charged Mathew easily subduing him and forcing him into a closet Mathew had retreated to the side of.

Mathew first noticed the cage when he was forced in, then he saw how the light was out, then he saw nothing more because Gilbert had shut the door. But, worst of all, before the light was blocked out he had seen what was inside of the cage and he had seen that the cage was open. He was trapped inside of a locked, dark closet with a tarantula.

Mathew started pleading with gilbert to let him out and away from his worst fear, and Gilbert just laughed. Mathew had heard the rustling of pages then Gilbert's voice.

"Mathew William's journal. Phone number xxx-xxx-xxx, if found please return at xx location."

Gilbert was the one who had his diary. Mathew realized that now.

It wasn't Ivan. Mathew's momentary feelings of guilt at wrongfully thinking the man had done it were washed away by a wave of hatred towards him. He didn't even know where it came from. Instead of feeling sorry about what he'd thought before, he only assured himself that Ivan had been the most likely candidate at the time considering his past obsessive behaviour. It was confusing his actions lately though, but he shouldn't be focusing on that. Gilbert was still out there, and he was still in here with a spider. A very big spider.

"Now, this was what I found really interesting. Entry number 157, it took a while to get through it all. I counted them out last night when I took it. You're pretty dedicated to it, it gave me a lot of ammo to use against you. Thankfully, I only need this one, I wouldn't want to waste too much time on you. So, let's get to the point. 'I saw a spider today. Ever since that one time when I was bitten by one when I was younger they have always freaked me out. Thank god the science centre the spider was at had taken allergy medication for it for whatever reason, I don't think I'll ever quite get over that tarantula. I don't think Alfred really expected me to be allergic. I couldn't breathe at all. I'm glad I didn't get a rash or anything then though, that would have just made Alfred get in even more trouble. I've avoided the entire science centre because of it for so long. Alfred still apologizes for it whenever we go by the place, I forgive him though, we were only seven at the time. It wasn't his fault.' So, from this, it seems that you have a fear of spiders or at least will have problems when it bites you, right Mattie? That's perfect. I'll just leave you in there for a while, okay?"

Mathew had no idea when he had started screaming, considering how many times Gilbert had giggled as he read, he must have started before, probably just after the lights went out. Something furry brushed against his leg and a pathetic whimper slipped out. The spider was on the floor around his feet now.

Somehow, Gilbert had heard his sound as he walked away and laughed harder. "Well, Mathew, good luck in there."

Mathew was pleading now. "Please, please, no. Don't leave me here. Please."

Gilbert didn't answer, and Mathew had to assume he'd left.

The spider curled up on Mathew's left foot. Mathew felt a few more tears fall from his face.

What was happening here? Why was Gilbert acting like this?

Ivan's POV

Ivan hated this whole situation. Every sob that Mathew let out was yet another one he also felt like making. But he also knew that Mathew wasn't in any danger.

He had checked out Gilbert's house before and switched out the spider with a ferret a few hours ago. He'd just placed a glamour on the ferret to make it look like a tarantula.

Mathew was too far gone in his panic to note how different the two creatures were. Perhaps he shouldn't have picked the ferret because of how similar its fur would seem, with a causal touch, like a tarantulas. Perhaps then Mathew wouldn't be freaking out. But, Mathew being in fear was needed to trick Gilbert.

Ivan made peace with his lesser of two evils.

It was better for Mathew to be afraid of a fake spider than to be dead from a real one and its even more poisonous owner. As soon as Mathew stopped making any sounds and Gilbert moved away, he would come in and get Mathew.


	3. Alfred finds Mathew on a date with Ivan

**Attraction chpt 3**

In this world there are magical beings that are always attracted to humans. It's in their nature. And it's in human beings nature, their fate, that they are always repelled by these creatures.

But it is a specific breed of humans who can attract one of the magical beings, these monsters, and it is a special, harmless, docile kind of monster that is attracted to them. The rest of the monsters instead spend their lives hunting down these special humans, and most of the time they torture them to death for fun.

Despite how many special humans lives it would save, all monsters are under an oath once they become of age and venture into this world at ten years of age, to either find their mate, their special human, or kill them, to never tell any human, special or not, about their true existence.

Therein lies the dilemma for these heartsick beings that are attracted to their special human, no matter what they do, they can never tell their human exactly what they are or give them a reason for their unnatural possessiveness of them. They can only tell one truth to their human, that they would always lay down their life for them because they love them with all of their heart. And yet that never stops fate from making their human hate them more than anyone else. Some monsters choose to never date their human and in that way stay by them, happy even after they marry somebody else because they know that their clock starts ticking down the moment they let their human know they love them. Three months, that is it.

* * *

Summary of chapter: This is a flashback to explain their (Alfred and Ivan's) animosity to each other and Gilbert sees it as he's been stalking the couple (Ivan and Mathew) before the curse descended on Mathew. Gilbert had specifically waited until the curse came upon him so that Mathew could hurt Ivan with his words and maybe even drive the big brute away. Gilbert also plans to use Alfred and actually controls him for the month following the incident so that he can make him keep making snide comments about Ivan, and make sure Mathew had a bad opinion of Ivan's letters. On Alfred's end though, after the initial older brother protectiveness had passed by once he saw Mathew with Ivan outside of the shop, Alfred had been fine with Ivan and Mathew being together.

* * *

The incident started when a certain American walked out of the front door of the local classy coffee shop right in front of the pair walking around on one of their many dates.

Mathew had not yet told his brother he was going out with the Russian immigrant who had been his best friend, and his twin brother's biggest rival, since he had moved to their area almost nine years ago.

"Oh shoot..." Mathew quietly murmured from beside Ivan, his large Russian boyfriend and best friend whose fingers were lovingly laced with his...and very obvious to see to the American that had now caught sight of them.

Mathew didn't know whether to cry and rush to his brother to try and desperately explain the situation or what-so he let go of Ivan's hand and took a step forward.

That was all Alfred needed to make sure he wouldn't hurt his precious little brother, and he tackled Ivan to the ground in a short run. Yay for football practice.

And Ivan? He did nothing to stop it.

He had known this was coming. Alfred, with his jock tendencies was pretty predictable, after all. Ivan had long ago decided that he would just have to trust Mathew to pull the brutish American off of him...or...considering Mathew's small frame and delicate features...perhaps convince his older twin to stop beating on him?

Like Alfred was currently pulling back his fist to do.

* * *

***approximately one hour later, after Mathew has pulled Alfred off of his new boyfriend Ivan***

* * *

'Well, so long as I don't see them together...alone...in Matthew's room. Maybe even nake-No way! I don't even want to think about that!' Alfred mind-yelled at himself. 'Gross. But, well, maybe they would make a pretty cute couple. BUT I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT THEIR HANKYPANKY-ING. NOPE. NADDA. Ewwww, why mind why?'

* * *

*Elsewhere in the house*

* * *

Mathew looked up curiously as he swore he had just heard his twin brother shrieking and yelling out "Lalalalalala nope! Not thinking about it-"

And then the slam of a door. Possibly the front one from how distant it sounded.

Mathew, on the other hand, said nothing and decided not to even think about. Which was probably best. Honestly, his brother could be...strange sometimes. Or, rather, all the time. But shush, he would never say something like that about his brother! Even if he sometimes really wants...but only under his breath and after a quick look around to make sure no one heard him bad-mouthing their school's most popular kid. He already got teased enough as it was for being gay. It's like everyone always forgot that Alfred was his brother and just preferred to ignore him in favour of the louder and more exuberant twin. But, really, he couldn't complain. Because, underneath his snide comments and the ribbing he gave Alfred at times, he loved his brother very much. He would truly hate if anything were to ever happen to Alfred to hurt him physically or verbally, especially if it was Mathew himself that caused it.

However, on the matter of Alfred, he really needed to tell him Ivan was off-limits.

After all, Mathew thought and blushed a deep bright pink, he loved Ivan, even if he hadn't told him quite yet...but...soon...maybe

* * *

***time skip, 4 hours later, evening***

* * *

Gilbert ambushes Alfred on the way home. He had gone to run around the park to burn off his excess energy and drive his thoughts away and had decided to go and actually tell Mathew that he accepted his relationship with Ivan once he got home when he passed by a clump of leafy trees and was bowled over by something with a strength that was definitely not human based on the size of whatever it was. For a crazy moment, Alfred thought he had been attacked by a wolf or something before he remembered that this park was in the middle of the city, and he scrambled to his feet, pulling the pocket knife he always carried on himself out of his back pocket so he could face his attacker. This was weird though. Now that their family lived in Canada, he hadn't expected any muggings. Nothing like this had happened before. Maybe someone had just accidentally run into him?

Then he saw the bared fangs. Actual pointy fangs, not normal teeth, of the person in front of him and the flashing red eyes. What the hell?

Then the person lifted their hand and gestured, sweeping their hand from left to right, and Alfred's vision went dark as he fell to the ground.

After Gilbert saw that his prey's brother had successfully been knocked out, he rushed over and crouched down, lifting the blond American's head up and cradling him as he went deep into his magic and gathered himself up so that he could bust into the boy's head and do what he had to do. Take him over and make sure he "disapproved" of Mattie's relationship so that he could plant even more doubt after the curse settled on the American's twin brother.

Looking through Alfred's mind, Gilbert frowned. So, Alfred had decided to accept it? Pfft, yeah right. That won't happen now. Like, ever.

Gilbert smiled darkly and let his spell take effect. If Alfred even saw the big Russian now, he would be lucky to not "fly off the handle" at him.

'Good luck enjoying your time with Ivan now, Birdie, when your brother insults the pitiful monster whenever he's around.'

* * *

**Please review!**

Hugs and Wuvs

-North


End file.
